by Tate James
A lazy smile curled his lips. "Mmm, I need to restock my explosives. I'll never get enough of that look in your eyes when you watched that house detonate."
"That too," I murmured, brushing my lips over his and loving how his lids lifted higher in surprise.
"Oh, that part." He chuckled a deep, throaty sound. "I'm happy to revisit that right now, if you want."
I licked my lips, tempted. But I was also anxious to see Zed and Lucas this morning. Since smashing though that barrier so perfectly with Cass, I was riding a jittery, happy high—the kind of mood that wanted to see what the fallout of our midnight mission had been.
"Coffee first," I suggested, sighing as he kissed my neck. I should have known intimacy would never be a long-term hurdle. Not when it came to my guys. Our bond was too damn strong.
Cass returned his lips to mine, kissing the breath right out of me before reluctantly pulling away. "Fine," he agreed, "coffee first."
I'd changed back into Zed's T-shirt when we’d returned to my room, so I didn't bother getting dressed before heading downstairs. Cass looped his arm around my waist before we entered the kitchen, and I couldn't help feeling like he was sending a not-so-subtle fuck you to Lucas and Zed.
Fucking men were never going to get past their competitive, jealous crap, I was sure of it.
"Good morning, fire-bugs," Zed greeted us, his narrow-eyed glare taking in the casual, intimate way Cass touched me. "I take it you two sorted out your issues?"
I aimed for innocence but couldn't wipe the smile from my face as I replied. "I don't know what you're talking about."
Zed huffed. "Smells like bullshit, Dare."
Lucas slid out of his chair at the table and came over to kiss my cheek, inhaling deeply as he did so. "Nah, smells like smoke. Like the ashy, delicious scent of Chase Lockhart's new house going up in a big old fireball at one in the morning."
Automatically, I frowned and lifted my braid to my nose to check if I did smell like smoke.
"Hah, caught." Lucas smirked.
I rolled my eyes but didn't try to deny it. Cass just tilted my chin up with a finger and kissed me softly before getting started making coffee.
Zed's gaze was heavy and hot, watching me intensely. So I crossed the distance to where he stood gripping the counter, and hugged him from behind, reassuring him that I was good and not just putting up a good front.
"Well, I had Lieutenant Jeffries on the phone first thing this morning," he told me as he shifted to hug me back, "spouting some crap about coincidences. Apparently, he thought it was suspicious Hades and I returned to Shadow Grove the same night as our neighbor's house blew up."
Cass just smirked. "Tell him to call back when he has proof. Guarantee there is none."
Zed gave a small grunt of approval. "You covered your tracks, then? Good."
"Like I'm some kind of fucking amateur," Cass grumbled, holding out a mug of coffee for me. I took it gratefully and made my way over to the table where Lucas was laying out various boxes of cereal and bowls.
I went straight for the sugary shit that Zed despised, filling my bowl up with colorful cereal hoops.
"Do you want me to arrange that meeting for today?" Lucas offered, taking the seat beside me and pouring his own bowl of the same sugary cereal. "Seeing as Cass is back?"
I glanced over at Cass, who was cracking eggs into a frying pan.
"Yeah, the sooner the better," I agreed. "Let's get that dealt with today, and then we can move on."
Lucas nodded, his mouth full of cereal, but he pulled his phone out and started tapping out a message while he ate. I relaxed into my seat, enjoying the moment of peace between the four of us. Zed was jokingly ribbing Cass, insulting his egg-cooking skills, and Lucas let his knee rest against mine under the table.
"You look calmer this morning," Lucas observed quietly when he put his phone back down and dropped his hand to my leg. "How's your arm?"
I wrinkled my nose. It hurt like a bitch, but I didn't want to spoil the moment by leaving to fetch my sling. "It's fine."
He gave my knee a squeeze, telling me he wasn't buying my shit. But he let it go, for now.
"Doc is coming by to see you in about half an hour," he told me between mouthfuls of food. "He might have a non-surgical fix for your ACJ that could get you out of the sling sooner rather than later."
"That'd be preferable," I commented, finishing my bowl. "But, um, could I get a hand in the shower before he gets here?"
Lucas grinned. "Washing off the evidence of arson? Of course." He quickly finished his own breakfast and rinsed out our bowls while I took a few more gulps of coffee.
"Lucky prick," Zed grumbled as Lucas left the kitchen with me.
I bit back a grin, pretending I hadn't heard, but Lucas gave a low chuckle. "Next thing you know, Zed will have worked out a shower schedule." He glanced down at me, his eyes glittering with confidence. "But we all know I'm your favorite shower helper, right?"
In truth, I probably didn't even need a shower helper anymore. Or I wouldn't for much longer. But it was kind of nice, so I was going to hold onto it for a while.
All jokes aside, Lucas really was an exceptional helper. His touches only lingered slightly more than they had last week, and I found myself quietly hoping he'd push harder, like Cass had.
He knew it, though. As he was helping me dry off, he threaded his fingers into the back of my hair and tipped my head up with a firm grip. "Doc will be here any minute, Hayden. I refuse to rush things just to get a quick fix." He pushed me gently against the wall, his body pinning me and his lips hovering right above mine. "Make no mistake, though. I want you so bad it's physically paining me not to lock the door and ignore Doc when he comes by."
I groaned as his hard dick crushed against my towel and I didn’t experience even a fraction of the panic I had a day ago. I had to give mental props to Cass's fingers for that breakthrough.
"I'm healing up so well I probably don't even need to see Doc," I murmured, slightly breathless.
Lucas's lips curled. "Nice try. We've got a lot to do today, and you need to take the Hades mantle back."
I pouted, but he wiped it away with kisses that made my heart race and my nipples harden. Damn those inconvenient life appointments getting in the way of my Lucas time.
He helped me get dressed, but I was still thinking about the press of his body against mine all throughout my medical checkup. It didn't help that he sat in on it all, listening intently to Doc's notes and inspecting how my wounds were healing.
By the time Doc left, I had clearance to remove all of my dressings and an appointment for that afternoon with a physical therapist in Rainybanks.
Lucas had picked up a new phone for me on our secured network from Dallas, and I barely paid attention to what the guys were saying as we climbed into one of Zed's cars as I swiped through my messages. It wasn't until he started the engine with a deep rumble that I glanced up.
"What happened to the Audi?" I asked, seeing as that was his usual go-to for a four-seater. We were in an Escalade, and last I checked, Zed didn't own one of those.
He cast me a quick look and shrugged. "It was time for a change."
"And this one is bulletproof," Lucas added with a grin from the backseat.
I arched a brow at Zed, but he just shrugged as he drove out of the garage. It was just the three of us for the day, with Cass left behind to avoid being spotted risen from the dead just yet. He had been willing to risk it, but just the thought of some foolish gangster taking a shot at him for faking his own death made my blood pressure spike dramatically. So he’d gotten left behind.
"Vega confirmed for tonight," Lucas spoke up, his attention on his phone. "That's everyone."
"Maurice?" I replied, surprised.
Lucas shot me back a slightly feral grin. "He wasn't given the option to refuse."
Fucking hell. Vicious was such a hot look on Lucas.
"We have about an hour before we need to head over to your PT appointment
," Zed told me, heading toward Shadow Grove’s downtown. "Are you okay to stop in and see Nadia? She's been asking after you. A lot."
"I'd love to," I replied sincerely. "How did everything work out with the girls?"
"Other than the little girl who died, most were returned to their homes. One ran away, and two are still living with Nadia for the time being." Zed drummed his fingers on the steering wheel as he drove, his tanned forearms flexing with the movement below where he'd rolled up his sleeves. I didn't even try to hide the way I checked him out, and he glanced over at me when we paused at a traffic light some minutes later.
"Keep giving me that look, Dare, and we can forget going to Nadia's," he murmured teasingly. The light changed, and his focus shifted back to the road.
"I'm game," Lucas offered from the backseat. "If that was a genuine offer."
Zed glanced at him in the mirror. "It wasn't. Keep that anaconda caged, Gumdrop."
"Damn," I muttered, teasing. If I was totally honest with myself, I still didn't know if I could confidently fall back into bed with anyone, let alone multiple anyones. There was one easy way to find out, but in the back of Zed's car in the middle of the day probably wasn't the time or the place.
Zed just placed his hand on my knee while he drove, and I relaxed into the familiar touch. He drove us through Shadow Grove to Nadia's café, which Chase's paid goons had recently trashed. Pulling up outside, it looked like her renovation was well underway.
"How much is this costing me?" I joked as we climbed out of the Escalade.
Lucas grimaced. "You don't want to know."
I gave a short laugh. Whatever it was, Nadia deserved it. She'd been so good to me, and now that I knew she was Cass's grandmother, she was an extension of my own little family. If she wanted to dip her coffee machine in twenty-four carat gold, I'd let her.
"Hades!" The excited shriek made me tense up a moment after we stepped into the construction site of Nadia's Cakes. A small, red-haired demon came flying through the scaffolding and damn near knocked me off my stiletto heels.
"Diana!" Nadia hollered from the kitchen, "You get your scrawny butt back here and clean up this paint!"
"Oh, kid, you're in trouble," Zed muttered under his breath with a chuckle.
Diana pulled back from where she was hugging my waist and shot a wide grin up at Zed. "Told you she'd be back. No one gets the better of Hades."
Zed just rolled his eyes like he was resisting the urge to argue with a kid.
"Diana!" Nadia bellowed again, and the girl flinched.
"Yeah, okay, maybe a little trouble." Then she glared up at me with all the attitude of a six-foot-seven gangster. "Don't leave. I just have to clean up some paint."
She slouched back in the direction Nadia was yelling from, and I shot Zed a bewildered look. He just grinned back. "Don't ask me; I haven't seen the kid in weeks."
Lucas snickered. "Yeah, when we were searching for clues, Zed made some morbid comment about you possibly being dead where Diana could hear him. She looked like she was ready to fight him over it."
"She was ready to fight me about it. I had to explain that I was just being sarcastic, and she gave me a lecture about not being such a Debbie Downer. Little brat." Then an affectionate grin crossed his face. "She reminds me of Seph at that age. All attitude, no manners."
"How old is she, anyway?" I asked. When I'd pulled her from the basement of Anarchy, I'd thought her to be only five or six, but now, having interacted with her, she seemed older.
Zed snorted. "We don't know."
"That's why I asked him to bring you here," Nadia announced, coming out of the kitchen with her hands propped on her hips and a moss-green stripe of paint down her cheek. "Stinking child won't give us anything useful to be able to find her family."
My eyes widened. "Uh... you asked me here to talk to a kid?"
Nadia folded her arms under her breasts. "Is that going to be a problem for you, sir?"
I glanced from her to Zed to Lucas and back. None of them offered me anything helpful, so I sighed and nodded. "Okay, sure. What do you need me to ask her?"
"Anything," Nadia replied, sounding exhausted. "Quite literally the only things we know about the little terror are her name and that she thinks the damn sun shines out of your vagina." Then she winced. "Uh, no disrespect intended, sir."
I bit back a laugh. "None taken."
Nadia nodded. "I'll sweeten the deal and plate you up some apple pie."
"With an offer like that, how can I refuse?" I muttered the comment somewhat sarcastically, but Nadia stopped me with a hand on my arm as I moved past her.
"I'm glad to see you back in one piece, Hades," she said quietly, patting my good arm. "I think the whole damn town gave a sigh of relief when you arrived home yesterday."
Swallowing the hard lump of emotion she'd brought up, I jerked a nod of acknowledgement, then continued on into the kitchen. Diana was on the floor with a rag and a bucket mopping up a spill of green paint and muttering curses that made my brows rise.
Glancing around, I didn't spot anyone else in the kitchen, so I figured we were probably okay to talk right there. But... how in the hell did I even start a conversation with this kid? I was awful with children. Just look at the mess I’d made of Seph, and she’d been thirteen when I took guardianship of her.
Clearing my throat, I tucked my fingers under the shoulder strap of my gun holster. Lucas had been dead against me wearing it, but I needed it. Being openly armed was as much a part of my costume as my red-soled shoes.
Diana sat back on her heels and threw her rag into the bucket with a scowl. Glaring up at me, her jaw took a distinctly stubborn set.
"I'm not going back to my parents, Hades. You can't make me."
I nodded thoughtfully, crossing my ankles as I leaned against a standing freezer. "Okay. How about if I kill them for you instead?"
23
We left Nadia's an hour later with Lucas cradling a cake box in his arms. My stomach was pleasantly full of apple pie and ice cream, but Nadia had insisted we take a marble mud cake home, too.
I'd given Nadia the relevant information: Diana was eight years old—small for her age—and wouldn't be returning to her family. Beyond that, I’d kept the details confidential. I'd initially offered to kill her family just as a way to get her to open up to me, but as soon as Diana started telling me her story, I knew I would make good on that promise.
Poor kid deserved better, and I had every intention of making her father regret every hair he’d ever harmed on that tough little cookie's head.
Physical therapy sucked. Big time. Not just because it really showed me how bad my range of motion was in that shoulder but also because my therapist was a gorgeous man by the name of Misha. So Lucas and Zed felt the need to puff their chests out and piss all over me to mark their territory. Metaphorically.
The thin layer of silver lining to the painful process, though, was Misha's optimistic assessment that if I worked on it, I shouldn't need surgery at all. My ACJ had been nicked, but not cut or torn, and my healing so far had been just short of miraculous.
I didn't fully appreciate how badly the PT had exhausted me, though, until I fell asleep on the drive to Cloudcroft. Our evening meeting with all the gang leaders under my purview was being held at Timber, but the last thing I remembered was my eyelids drooping before we'd even hit the freeway.
Zed gently shook me awake some time later, and I groaned my reluctance.
"I know, baby," he murmured, kissing my cheek. "Say the word, and I'll reschedule this meeting until tomorrow. We can just go home and sleep."
I yawned heavily, blinking myself awake and meeting Zed's eyes. I was in the back of his Escalade, having given Lucas the shotgun seat after my appointment, and had somehow managed to slip totally horizontal while I'd slept.
"I like the new car," I mumbled, rubbing the heel of my hand over my eye before remembering my makeup. Dammit. I couldn't go in there looking like a damn panda.
&nb
sp; "Yeah?" Zed smiled, tucking my hair behind my ear with gentle fingers.
I nodded. "Mm-hmm. Spacious." I gave an exaggerated stretch, making the fresh scars on my ribs tug and itch. Maybe I would talk to Cass about covering that up for me, seeing as I definitely didn't want the start of Chase's fucking name on my skin forever.
Zed chuckled lightly, then helped me sit up. I'd fallen asleep with my sling on, and I cringed as I rolled my shoulders to loosen the stiffness.
"How bad do I look?" I asked, glancing around. We were in the underground parking lot for Timber, and Lucas was nowhere to be seen.
"You could never look bad," Zed replied with a sly grin.
I rolled my eyes. "Smooth, Zeddy Bear. Real smooth."
He laughed, then swiped his thumb under my eye a couple of times to clean up the makeup I'd just smudged. "Perfect," he murmured, combing his fingers through my hair to tidy it up. Lucas had helped me style it before we left the house, so it wasn't too out of control. "Lucas is inside keeping an eye on our guests. We wanted to let you sleep as long as possible. Besides, little Gumdrop seems to enjoy throwing some big dick energy around."
I snickered. "If anyone can back that up..."
Zed huffed in a good-humored way, then helped me exchange the sling for a gun holster. The straps rubbed my wounded shoulder uncomfortably, but my tight, long-sleeved black top hid the scarring itself. All about appearances.
"You good?" he asked, grabbing my shoes from the floor where I'd kicked them off. He slid them onto my feet for me with a warm hand on my ankle, then offered me a hand to get out of the vehicle.
Drawing a deep breath, I smoothed my skirt down, tugging it into place before releasing my sigh. "Good," I confirmed. I rolled my neck and heard it crack. "Let's get this done."
I paused to wait as Zed fetched extra weapons from the trunk, slinging his favorite AR-15 over his shoulder. It was way more firepower than needed, but one never could be too cautious with a gathering of rivals. Besides, Zed had a reputation to uphold, just like I did.
We took the goods elevator up to the storage area of Timber, then made our way out into the main club from there. My arrest and subsequent disappearance had put a hold on our plans for a grand opening, so the club was empty except for the small grouping of tattooed, tough-faced gangsters seated in a collection of velvet couches and armchairs in the middle of the main room.
